FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

China’s Foreign Minister Stresses To Make Most of Korea Summit’s Rare Opportunities

May 17, 2018 (EIRNS)—In a statement given during his official visit to France today, Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi said the current situation on the Korean Peninsula calls for avoidance of “divergent action.”

“It should be stressed that it had taken much effort to achieve a minor improvement of the situation on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea acted as an initiator [of reconciliation], which fact deserves definite approval,”

Minister Wang Yi was quoted by TASS.

“Resolution of the peninsula’s problem that has a comprehensive nature requires coordinated actions. Any divergent actions are unacceptable.”

“It is necessary to prevent a situation when one party is demonstrating activity while another is only building up pressure,” he stressed, and called to make most of the rare opportunity for reconciliation between the two Koreas.

The Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun claims today that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had told North Korea that the U.S. would be willing to remove Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if the North ships out the nuclear warheads and ICBMs.

According to TASS yesterday, the director of Russia’s Asian Strategies Center at the Russian Economics Institute under the Academy of Sciences, Georgy Toloraya, commented that North Korea’s threats concerning the summit could be part of some backstage bargaining in order to gain a firmer foothold at the talks.

“Possibly the United States has put forward some unacceptable conditions, to which North Korea made a corresponding response using the military exercises as a pretext. The real subject matter of bargaining remains unknown,”

Toloraya said.

“The North Koreans will agree to negotiate only on their own terms. A meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will largely depend on how the situation in the region will develop,” he said.

“As follows from the U.S. Department of State’s reaction, the news that the high-level talks with the South Koreans have been cancelled has had a stunning effect on the Americans, who wish to go ahead with the negotiations. Possibly, the North Koreans will manage to attain their aims. It depends on what they will agree on. The work is in progress, both parties are moving on towards this goal, but everything looks not easy at all,”

Toloraya said. Toloraya has also been the Executive Director of the Russian National Committee on BRICS Research.